zeph wrote:I don't know the particulars of Raikkonen's struggles, but to be this far off the pace from Alonso begs the question, just how bad is that Ferrari really, or just how good is Alonso?
I have always rated Raikkonen highly, and perhaps he just has more trouble adjusting to the new formula, but I'd expected him to have sorted it out by now and draw closer to his teammate.
Differences in the wet are overall amplified, Rosberg was 0,7 behind Hamilton at one point, Vettel ended up half a second behind Ricciardo, for this particular pair even more. The rest is obvious from previous seasons and hardly surprising, plus new clean sheet cars and one more year.
Now it's time for over-hyping Ricciardo, especially from Red Bull. Soon enough joke about him being all-time great will be said seriously. Several seasons of mediocrity apart from couple of qualifying highlights, now after getting himself best downforce, traction, cornering car he's one of the best. I doubt it. At least Magnussen overly hype ceased along with his and McLaren's performance.
Lotus is trying very hard to maintain 100% failure rate in wet qualifying, you end up like that when you have no responsibility for strategy/timing mistakes, on the contrary it used to be OK. Who cares if it's five in a row.
With Rosberg - this is where you end up with safety first approach over the years- you can't just switch maximum attack on and off just like that. Just like last season there were some starts (Abu Dhabi?) when I thought drivers like Perez (worse overall) would have been in front of Vettel in the first corner. It may be smart this season but not without consequences - mistakes.